Twitter

Thought Seeds

“But especially as I drink the last of my water, I believe that we are subjects of the planet's hydrological process, too proud to write ourselves into textbooks along with clouds, rivers, and morning dew. When I walk cross-country, I am nothing but the beast carrying water to its next stop.”

-- Craig Childs, "The Secret Knowledge of Water"

More than 70% of the human body is made up of water.

The Best-Selling, Award-Winning Books on Harvesting Rainwater — and Lots More On-Site Resources and Potential

Turn water scarcity into water abundance! These books show you how to conceptualize, design, and implement sustainable water-, sun-, wind-, and shade-harvesting systems for your home, landscape, and community. They enable you to access your on-site resources (rainwater, greywater, topsoil, sun, plants, and more), give you a diverse array of strategies to maximize their potential, and empower you with guiding principles to create an integrated, multi-functional resource-harvesting and -enhancing landscape plan specific to your site and needs. These books will help bring your site to life, reduce your cost of living, endow yourself and your community with skills of self-reliance and cooperation, generate renewable on-site power, and create living air conditioners of vegetation that grow beauty, food, flood-control, and wildlife habitat. Stories of people who are successfully welcoming rain into their life and landscape will invite you to do the same!

The wasteful path to scarcity. The site rapidly dehydrates itself by erosively draining rainwater and runoff away to flood downslope areas and contaminate surface water with sediment. Greywater is lost to the sewer. Costly municipal or well water is pumped in to replace the free water that was drained away. Leaf drop/mulch is also drained away further depleting fertility and water-holding capacity. This leads to a depletion of resources and feeling scared in the city due to the resulting scarcity.

The stewardship path to abundance. This site passively hydrates itself by harvesting and infiltrating rainwater, runoff, and greywater on site, reducing downslope flooding and overall water consumption and contamination. The need to pump in water is greatly reduced or eliminated. Leaf drop/mulch is also harvested and cycled back into the soil and plants further increasing fertility and water-holding capacity. This leads to an enhancement of resources and a bun dance of celebration due to the resulting abundance.

Watch and read the American Oasis story about Brad Lancaster and others building on the region’s water-harvesting heritage and traditions:

Watch Free Water, a short film on Brad Lancaster and the potential of planting the rain:

In Dry Land, episode 5 of the Greenhorns’ Our Land series, Brad discusses how we can work with nature to deconstruct our water woes back into water wins:

This rainwater-harvesting segment on AZ Illustrated Nature features the work of and interviews with landscape designer Logan Byers (Local Design + Build) and rainwater-harvesting expert Brad Lancaster.

Check out Brad Lancaster’s interviews on NPR’s Morning Edition:

Click here to listen to January 10, 2008 interview.
Click here to listen to September 17, 2008 interview.

Sing Back the River, a beautiful, bittersweet song by Petey Mesquitey about southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz River which used to flow year-round near downtown Tucson. To hear Petey’s introductory story to the song click here.

Dry River, by Dave Alvin. This video link enables you to hear one version of the song, but I think his best version is Dry River (Live) from his album Interstate City (Live) which he recorded as Dave Alvin & the Guilty Men. The river in the song is the Los Angeles River in Los Angeles, California.

We need more songs to build a smokin’-hot soundtrack to help motivate and lubricate the regenerative movement of working with our neighbors and ecosystems to enhance life and its potential within our communities and throughout our planet. Do you have a song(s) to contribute? If so, please send it to admin@HarvestingRainwater.com. Click here for more songs; we’ll be adding new ones as they come in.

Water-related rebates and incentive programs in Tucson, Arizona

List of incentives and rebates for Tucson Water’s residential and commercial users, including rebates for rainwater harvesting, greywater harvesting, and high-efficiency toilets.

Rainwater-harvesting rebate, which can pay you up to $2,000 for water-harvesting earthworks or rain gardens (passive strategies), gutters, cisterns or tanks (active rainwater-harvesting systems), and even consulting and design.